Internet

Lokau.com, Brazil's largest Internet auction Web site, said it will pay $20 million to buy the exclusive rights to offer auction services at Universo Online Inc. Web site.

Part of the money also includes the purchase of advertisement space at Universo Online, or UOL, the country's largest Internet service provider with 680,000 paying subscribers.

TELECOM

J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and Salomon Smith Barney will underwrite the planned sale of more than $290 million worth of shares in Argentine telephone company Telecom Argentina Stet-France Telecom SA.

Telecom, which is one of Argentina's two fixed-line operators, said the two U.S. firms will underwrite the U.S. and international parts of the sale. J.P. Morgan and Comafi Bursatil SA, the brokerage unit of Argentina's Banco Comafi, will underwrite the sale in Argentina.

Ericsson AB, the world's No. 3 maker of cellular phones, expects sales to grow at least 20 percent this year in Latin America on rising demand for its mobile and fixed-line products.

Brazil, the company's fourth-biggest market after the United States, China and the United Kingdom, will lead the way in the region. Ericsson had sales of $2 billion in Latin America last year.

TOBACCO

British American Tobacco PLC, the world's second-largest tobacco company, offered to buy out minority shareholders in its Argentine tobacco unit for $38.5 million.

Nobleza Piccardo Saicyfa, which has about 37 percent of the Argentine cigarette market, said its British parent offered $2.85 a share for the 30 percent of the company it doesn't already own.